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Germany Demands Google Forfeit Citizens' Wi-Fi Data
eldavojohn writes "Germany has ordered Google to give up hard disk drives used to store German data collected during their Street View operations in that country. This follows Google's admission last week (after prodding from the Germans) that it had collected the data from unsecured wireless area networks from around the entire world as its roving cars collected the photo archive for Street View. Google says they've offered to just destroy the data, in cooperation with national regulators, but the German government wants to know what they've collected. They do not think that destroying the drives suffices for compliance with the laws. Officials went so far as to say of the situation, 'It is not acceptable that a company operating in the EU does not respect EU rules.' Germany has certainly been keeping their eye on the search giant." The Ars coverage notes that the US FTC may be looking more closely at Google's collection as well.
There's nothing wrong with laws also giving fines for misusing the unsecured connections and sniffing the traffic in it.
And as it is, it's currently unlawful. You can say that proper security is needed (it is), but the fact is that Google broke laws.
Your home connection to your ISP is also mostly unsecured. Would it be ok for me to tap into that? After all, you weren't using encrypted VPN or encrypted connection to your ISP, so it's only your own fault, right? I didn't think so.
They only wanted one HDD to see what kind of data Google collected, not all of them.
And yet, if I drive through your neighborhood and write down the time of day everyone leaves and gets home, how many kids they have, you can bet I'd be getting a visit from the police.
On a side note, for a long time cordless phones were completely unsecured, and anyone with a scanner could listen to conversations. The law was very clear - you could listen but never discuss what was being said.
Would a similar law for wireless traffic work? I don't think seeing a wireless network or even using it should be a crime, but recording IP addresses, tracking what ports are open, how many computers are connected, and most importantly, keeping a database of it, could be illegal.